LOCAL PRESS

EU ministers decide 21 January as start date for Serbia (Tanjug)

The first inter-governmental conference between the EU and Serbia, which will mark the formal start of the accession talks, will be held on 21 January, the text says in the part that refers to EU enlargement and Serbia, which Tanjug was presented with several hours before its official adoption.  Earlier versions of the document had 20 December as the date, but the ministers agreed in the meantime to start the talks in January. Tanjug’s diplomatic sources say the reason for that is Germany’s insistence on January, but that the coming Christmas holidays also affected the decision, as the conference would have been difficult to fit in the Council’s schedule. The Council will continue to monitor closely Serbia’s work on normalizing its relations with Kosovo and the implementation of the agreements signed so far, the conclusions state, adding that Belgrade and Pristina must not obstruct each other’s EU integration. During this new stage of the relations with the EU, the Council calls on Serbia to pay particular attention to the rule of law, judiciary reform and the battle against corruption and organized crime, the document says, stressing the need to continue also the reform of the public administration. Serbia should continue working with EULEX and helping EULEX perform its mandate unobstructed, according to the conclusions. The Council is expected to adopt also the framework for the talks with Serbia, which still contains some issues that need resolving.

Vucic: Results in battle against crime and corruption soon (Politika/Radio Serbia)

Serbian First Deputy Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic said in Banja Luka, Republika Srpska (RS), that the concrete results of cooperation between the authorities of Serbia, the RS and B&H in battle against crime and corruption would be visible soon. After the talks Vucic and Serbian Prime Minister Ivica Dacic had with the RS President Milorad Dodik and Prime Minister Zeljka Cvijanovic, Vucic said he was satisfied with the joint session of the Serbian and the RS governments as it is essential for citizens that mutual relations in the economy be built and new jobs produced. Vucic said there were markets for agricultural products and that efforts in that field would be invested in the forthcoming period. We welcome our goods from the RS and together we will succeed in finding markets for products from the RS and Serbia as that is in the interest of our citizens, he said, adding Serbia has good cooperation with the RS authorities, which cooperation will continue. The RS President Milorad Dodik said that the talks had summed up what has been achieved so far and confirmed the high level of cooperation and friendly and close relations in all the fields. We focused on the economy, economic cooperation and third markets and also on energy projects, he said. The bilateral cooperation is in line with the Dayton Accords, to the benefit of the people of both the RS and Serbia and not to the detriment of anyone. We wish to develop our relations to mutual interest and not to the detriment of B&H or anyone else – but to the benefit of all, emphasized Dodik. He announced cooperation in battle against crime and corruption, adding that Serbia is an absolute regional leader in that battle. He congratulated Serbia on the positive assessments and the forthcoming start of the EU accession talks and reiterated that the RS was waiting for B&H to resolve certain issues which have halted it on the European path.

Negotiations on coalition in Kosovska Mitrovica (Beta)

A meeting was held today in Kosovska Mitrovica, at the initiative of the newly elected Mayor Krstimir Pantic of the Serbian (Srpska) Civic Initiative, on the formation of the ruling coalition in north Mitrovica. The meeting was attended by the leader of the SDP Civic Initiative Oliver Ivanovic. “The talks were only about the principles and in any case we will put on paper all options we discuss,” Ivanovic told Beta. He adds that a coalition agreement will be drafted if they reach agreement on the government. “For the time being, it is evident that we have six mandates each and that our list has the possibility to add one more member to our delegate group,” said Ivanovic. He stresses this will not influence the reached agreement because this member will have the obligation to respect the rules and agreement that are to be reached. According to Ivanovic, the resumption of negotiations is planned in two days when all details will be defined and the agreement signed. The constitutive session of the municipal assembly is scheduled for 24 December and it will be held in the building of the municipality of north Mitrovica. “We need a two-third majority for constituting the municipal assembly, meaning we will start negotiating with other representatives of delegate groups and individuals,” said Ivanovic. The local assembly in north Mitrovica will also include delegates of Hashim Thaqi’s Democratic Party of Kosovo that has three mandates, the Democratic Union of Kosovo, the Alliance of the Future for Kosovo, the Bosniak Party and the Independent Liberal Party that each have one delegate.

 

REGIONAL PRESS

Dacic, Cvijanovic sign Memorandum of understanding (Fena/Srna)

The fifth joint session of governments of Serbia and the RS was held in Banja Luka on Monday and Serbian Prime Minister Ivica Dacic and RS Prime Minister Zeljka Cvijanovic signed a Memorandum of understanding between Serbia and the RS on business and technical cooperation. Dacic said that Serbia wishes to maintain best and closest possible relations with the RS and B&H although the date of the joint session between the Serbian government and the B&H Presidency was postponed twice already. “Only a strong and internationally respected Serbia can help its people,” Dacic said and underscored that Serbia is by the RS side but it is not violating the Dayton Accords and wants to nurture good and constructive although perhaps not so close ties with the Sarajevo government. Dacic also said that the RS can count on Serbia’s strong support and the search for common interests which are present in the areas of economy, education, science and culture. As the central project of the two government’s cooperation, Dacic listed the South Stream pipeline and the energy agreement between Serbia, Italy, the RS and B&H as a document of key importance. Other important projects comprise Podrinje and the joint presentation on the Russian and some other markets. Cvijanovic said that during the joint session, the officials reviewed the work done so far and the tasks which will be in the focus of attention in the time to come, especially concerning legislative and other modes of support of the Serbian government to the RS concerning the South Stream pipeline. Cooperation should continue so that the RS could respect all deadlines regarding the project, Cvijanovic said and added that the approximate date to launch the project in the RS could be September 2014. According to Fena, Cvijanovic said that officials also agreed that the presidents of the RS and Serbia should head the Committee to mark the beginning of World War I.
Serbian Prime Minister Dacic and Deputy Prime Minister Vucic met with RS President Milorad Dodik and Vucic had talks with Mladen Bosic, leader of the Serb Democratic Party as the strongest opposition party in the RS.

Radojicic: B&H will expect negative rating from Brussels (Oslobodjenje)

“All indications are that the EU assessment of B&H could be mostly negative, given that conditions relating to Sejdic-Finci and the coordination mechanism are all incomplete,” said Igor Radojicic, the Republika Srpska parliament speaker. “It’s just a question of the dictionary with which the negative assessment will be given, whether it will be a moderate, diplomatic dictionary with the expectation that further progress will be made and results achieved, or whether it will be some harsh rhetoric, with the screw of some of the IPA funds and something else,” said Radojicic. However, in any case, he says there will be a negative assessment from Brussels on progress. The question is, he says, according to which principles the elections will be organized next year in B&H. “Everything that is being done by April is still possible to implement. Everything that will happen after that month will not reflect on the elections in 2014, because they should be entered in the first week of May,” Radojicic said.

 

INTERNATIONAL PRESS

Serbia's Progressives Claim Local Poll Victories (BIRN, 16 December 2013)

The ruling party has won convincingly in early local elections in three Serbian municipalities, giving it renewed confidence of achieving victory in the next parliamentary elections.

Politicians from Serbia's ruling Progressive Party celebrated on Sunday night by doing the Serbian traditional dance, the kolo, at their headquarters to welcome victories in the Belgrade municipality of Vozdovac, Odzaci in northern Serbia and Kostolac in the country’s east.
The festivities started after preliminary results from the early elections in the three municipalities showed that the party had won convincingly and that it will be able to form local governments in these municipalities without entering coalitions with others.
According to the preliminary results, the Progressives won 49.78 per cent of the vote in Vozdovac while the opposition Democrats got 11.65 per cent.
In Odzaci, the Progressives won 48.18 per cent, and in Kostolac 45.51 per cent.
Nebojsa Stefanovic, the head of Belgrade's Progressives, said after the victory in Vozdovac that the results had shown that the party was ready for parliamentary polls.
"This is a great victory and it is proof that people appreciate what we do. Now is the moment for new parliamentary elections," Stefanovic told reporters on Sunday night.
The most recent opinion poll suggested that the Progressives are now Serbia's most popular party and that if parliamentary elections were called now, they could count on the support of 41.5 per cent of all voters in Serbia. The research was carried out from September 27-30 with a sample of 1,080 people.

Vladimir Goati from watchdog organisation Transparency Serbia said that the elections in the three municipalities were an indicator of the overall mood of the country's voters.

"Because they are three completely different sites, that can be sampled to determine the party’s power," Goati explained.

Serbia Yet to Form EU Negotiating Team (BIRN, 16 December 2013)

The Serbian government is keen to start EU accession talks in late December or January next year but has yet to appoint a negotiating team to do the job.

With a month or less to go before the proposed start of Serbia's accession talks with the EU, the Balkan country has only appointed its lead negotiator, Tanja Miscevic, but no other members of the negotiating team.

Miscevic, former director of the Office for European Integration, was appointed back in September to coordinate and manage the negotiating process through all stages of the talks.

She then said that up to 20 people would be part of the negotiating team, which has yet to be formed.

The Serbian government has refused to comment on the matter, but Aleksandra Joksimovic, director of the Centre for Foreign Policy in Belgrade, said that not having the negotiating team in place would not jeopardise the entire process.

"If there is an acute need for the immediate formation of the negotiating team, it will be formed," Joksimovic told Serbian daily paper Danas on Friday.

However the slow appointment of the team is unusual because the Serbian government has acted quickly to make final deals with Kosovo on the implementation of the Belgrade-Pristina Brussels agreement to normalise relations so it can start EU accession talks as soon as possible.

Serbian Prime Minister Ivica Dacic met his Kosovo counterpart Hashim Thaci on Friday in Brussels to discuss how the judiciary in northern Kosovo will operate.

Kosovo wants the seat of the north Kosovo court to be in the Albanian-majority southern part of the divided town of Mitrovica, with branches in the northern municipalities inhabited mainly by Serbs.

Belgrade however insists that the seat of the court should be in northern Mitrovica and separate from the court in the southern part of the town.

EU foreign ministers are set to decide on Tuesday when exactly accession talks with Serbia will begin, either in late December or early January 2014.

The European Council agreed on June 28 that Serbia could start EU membership talks in January 2014 at the latest. Serbia became an EU candidate in March 2012.

Kosovo Mulls Imposing Visa Regime on Bosnians (BIRN, by Edona Peci, 16 December 2013)

Pristina is considering whether to force visitors from Bosnia and Herzegovina to obtain entry visas because Sarajevo insists that travellers from Kosovo have visas.

Kosovo’s Foreign Minister, Enver Hoxhaj, will propose that the government impose a visa regime on travellers from Bosnia in response to Sarajevo’s continued insistence on entry visas, the ministry told Balkan Insight.

“After a six-year-long blockade which the authorities in Bosnia applied to people from Kosovo, minister Hoxhaj will ask the government to apply reciprocal measures for Bosnia,” said foreign ministry spokesperson Artan Behrami.

“Once the decision is taken, citizens of Bosnia can be provided with a visa by our diplomatic mission in Tirana,” he added.

He said the motion would be submitted to an upcoming government session for consideration, but did not specify exactly when.

Kosovo declared independence from Serbia in 2008. Bosnia and Herzegovina is the only former Yugoslav republic apart from Serbia that has not recognised Kosovo as an independent country.

Pristina also does not have diplomatic relations with Sarajevo.

Bosnia began to recognise Kosovo passports in March 2012, but Kosovo citizens who wish to travel to the country must still pay 31 euro for a visa.

Before that, people from Kosovo who wanted to travel to Bosnia had to obtain special permission to travel using UN Mission in Kosovo identity papers.

Bosnia's Croat Coalition Falls Apart (BIRN, by Elvira M. Jukic, 16 December 2013)

The two largest Croat parties, which are among the ruling six in Bosnia's state-level government, have ended their coalition, a move that follows splits in the Bosniak and Serb blocs.

The Croatian Democratic Union 1990, HDZ1990, announced on Friday that it had ended its coalition with its sister Croat party HDZBiH at all levels of government.

“HDZ1990 is continuing to fight on its own for our programme and goals... on all levels of government,” the party said in a statement.

“We call on all other political organisations that are ready, on democratic principles, to build new relations in Bosnia and Herzegovina which would assure equal rights to all peoples and citizens [to join us],”  the statement said.

The split came after HDZ1990 representatives were dismissed from the government of Canton Ten in west Herzegovina by their HDZBiH partners.

The break-up of the Croat coalition came after the collapse of the Serb bloc last month, which resulted in the dismissal of one minister from Serb Democratic Party, SDS, Mirko Sarovic.

The SDS’s coalition with its partners, the Alliance of Independent Social Democrats, SNSD, ended amid mutual accusations that the parties were breaching the terms of their agreed joint programme.

Meanwhile the Bosniak coalition between the Social Democratic Party, SDP, and the Party of Democratic Action, SDA, broke up last year amid disagreements over the state budget.

The SDA was expelled from the government and then replaced by the Alliance for a Better Future, SBB, at the end of 2012.

Political analyst Srecko Latal told Balkan Insight recently that the root of this political crisis was not in the disputes between ethnic groups but within the parties themselves.

“This political system has collapsed over the last few years,” Latal said.

“Many see the problem between the ethnic-political blocks, but instead the problem exists within those blocks, between the parties,” he said.

So far there has been no indication whether the rupture within the Croat bloc will lead to the changing of ministers, as happened when the Bosniak and Serb coalitions broke up.

Montenegro declares cooperation with UAE expanding (Kuna, 13 December 2013)

SARAJEVO -- The government of Montenegro issued a statement in Podgorica on Friday praising the country's relations with the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
The official statement indicated significant expansion of mutual cooperation, namely in investments, between Montenegro and the UAE.
These close ties were examined during a meeting by President of Montenegro Filip Vujanovic with visiting General Sheikh Mohammad bin Zayed Al-Nahyan, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and Deputy Supreme Commander of the UAE Armed Forces, it said.
The two sides discussed means of enhancing the bilateral cooperation in different sectors, said the statement, broadcast on Podgorica Radio. President Vujanovic presented Sheikh Mohammad with the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
The Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi also met with the Prime Minister of Montenegro, Milo Dukanovic, and discussed ways of enhancing bilateral relations, especially in the sector of tourism, as well as reclamation of real estate properties and farmlands.
Montenegro's government has decided to provide facilities for the UAE citizens to visit or stay in the republic, including the possibility of periodically then continuously activating seasonal air transport lines.
The UAE signed, last year, several economic cooperation agreements with Serbia, including accords for investments in tourism, air transport and land reclamation.